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Ten minutes with Amercan Le Mans Series driver Joey Hand of BMW RLL

March 14, 2013

Joey Hand will be driving the BMW Riley this weekend at Sebring. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

One of the wild cards at the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring on Saturday is the new BMW Z4 GTE, which replaces the M3 -- which happens to be the defending GT champion from last year. One of the winning drivers from last year, Joey Hand, returns, this time behind the wheel of the No. 56 BMW Team RLL BMW Z4 GTE with Dirk Mueller and John Edwards.

The Rahal Letterman Lanigan BMWs did reasonably well in qualifying -- 26th and 27th overall, eighth and ninth in class – with Hand's car the slower of the two, but only slightly. Hand's team car, led by driver Bill Auberlen, turned a lap of 112.447 mph, with Hand's car a hair behind at 112.343 mph.

Earlier this week, Hand talked about Sebring, the new BMW, and his year in the European DTM series, where he also drove for BMW.

On the learning curve for the new Z4: “It was pretty last-minute for us. I mean, the boys are still building spare parts and things like that as you'd expect with a new program. But for us I would say it's been a little easier than 2009 when we started with the M3. We have the same team, same drivers pretty much, and so it's not as steep of a learning curve. So we just have a new race car this time and a new tire supplier.

“As far as the car goes, I mean, I sit in it, it's like a BMW when you get inside, it's a little tighter to get through the door, but it still feels like a BMW to drive, and the initial driving of it is pretty comfortable.

“There's definitely new stuff, but I'm pretty happy with the initial feel, how the car drives. For me it's also a cool looking car. Everybody is pretty excited, a lot of work ahead of us. Obviously there's things that could go wrong -- it's a new car so we're hoping that we've got things pretty sorted and we can go the distance. I think as we all know at the 12 Hours at Sebring the first thing is to go the distance.”

On the challenge of Sebring, compared to Daytona and Le Mans: “Daytona is more about the length, and the track is not super hard on the cars compared to what we have at Sebring. A lot of people say Sebring is tougher than the 24-hour race a lot of times for the cars and even for the drivers.

“I think the big thing here is you have a track that's very, very bumpy. You have to make the car go through the bumps in turn 17, turn one, and even in turn 13. It's just constantly working the suspension and really beating the car up

“Also Sebring is very much more like 24 Hours at Le Mans as far as the lighting goes. There's a few spots that have some artificial lighting, but in the back section it's really, really dark, and so from our standpoint in the GT car, you always have the passing of the LMP1, P2, even PC cars, and then you're doing battle in your own class and then you're passing GTC cars. With GT cars you've got to have eyes in the back of your head.

“But yeah, you're just always on your toes. You've got to be mentally very strong and you've got to be physically strong in this car. This car, Turn 1, we're hustling through there, for us, and you're jumping off the ground, coming back down. It's definitely a very, very tough race, and so we're prepared to try and make the car go the distance. That's a lot of what we deal with. And going fast the whole race, not totally what we're up for. We'll try to make that last couple hours.”

On moving to Michelin rubber for the race: “Like I always say, the tires are the first thing to hit the road. So that's been a big change for us. I've never driven a car like this with Michelins, so it was new to me. You really depend on the tire, obviously, and you start to learn when that tire is loaded, unloaded, when it's about to come unloaded, all these certain things, and so far when I've driven with the Michelins, it's been a really good tire.”

What else is different about the Z4? “It's a totally different type of suspension, the wheelbase is shorter, the car is a bit wider and lower, so there's so many differences from the M3 to the Z4 that it definitely feels like it's a different car. But you sit a little bit further back, things like that.

“I think the cool thing about it is what BMW has done is they've made the car feel like a BMW again, so you get it and drive it and it feels different at first, but you end up driving it the same way, and one of the keys to a BMW has always been that the cars get from the entry to the middle on the brakes really well, and it really is good for my driving style, and this car does the same thing.

“We're all learning together what the car wants, what it feels like, what directions we need to go, and today we're actually getting rained on a bit so we're not driving too much. But I think we've definitely got some stuff to learn.”

On racing DTM in Europe last year: “For me, even in Europe, racing is racing. You're maximizing what you have, the tires, the car, the situation, you're doing battle. A lot of people watched it and thought, oh, it looks like tough racing. Well, it is tough racing, but I had a pretty darned tough race here last year at the end of the race, too, a good throw-down battle.

“I learned a lot over there just about different ideas, quickly some of the stuff was how critical over there pit stops are. You have to learn quickly. Over here our idea is to obviously want the pit stops to be quick, but we're more focused on the 12-hour race. So when you're doing your second or third pit stop here at Sebring you're not going to really see us pushing, pushing, pushing to the pit speed limiter with a chance of getting a penalty. We're not going to push into the pit box and slide through or something like that. You're going to take it a little bit easy.

“Over there every time you do a pit stop it is very, very critical. The stop is 2.7 seconds or 3 seconds and there's a chance to lose hundredths or tenths, and those tenths can be the difference of coming back on track in third or fourth or fifth or whatever.

“For me I think it was really good. I got to learn a lot. It gave me kind of a different look on how to do some of the same things, and it was a whole lot of new stuff. So I'm excited to go back over and do that DTM stuff, also. But really happy I'm back over here at Rahal because as I said, I've had a great four years here, love these guys, love my engineers and my teammates, and I think I still have things to learn over here, also.”